Hosted World Wide Web (“Web”) conferencing services allow users to meet and collaborate over the Internet. In particular, users can upload documents to a server computer operated by the provider of the hosted conferencing service and share the documents among the meeting participants. Users can also annotate the documents as they are presented. Functionality is also typically provided for making a recording of a hosted meeting, which often includes generating an audio/visual recording of the presented documents, annotations, and potentially other audio and video information. The meeting data, including the meeting content and the meeting recording, are stored at the server computer operated by the provider of the hosted conferencing service.
Meeting data stored by hosted conferencing service providers can consume a large amount of storage space. Because large quantities of mass storage is expensive to purchase and to operate, hosted conferencing service providers often desire to delete the stored meeting data as quickly as possible after a meeting has occurred. In order to accomplish this, hosted conferencing service providers often specify a fixed period of time after which all meeting data is deleted. For instance, a hosted conferencing service provider may specify that all meeting data is deleted 30 days after a meeting has been held.
In contrast to the desire of the hosted conferencing service providers to delete meeting data as soon as possible is the strong need of users to reuse the meeting data. For instance, it is very common for users to view the recording of a meeting for many weeks or even months after a meeting has occurred. However, the common policy of hosted conferencing service providers to delete meeting data after a fixed period of time often results in the deletion of meeting data that is still useful and relevant to users. It can be very frustrating for a user to attempt to view a meeting recording only to discover that the hosted conferencing service provider has deleted the meeting data.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.